So, many minutes later, he was able to increase the Ordinary Blood Symbols in his dantian from 50 to 266.
Then immediately he got to that amount, entering the Blood Acolyte stage, a powerful blood-red aura that caused the air around him and for dozens of feet to instantly become turbulent, exploded out from within his body with a loud boom. Also, because of the shocking fierce power possessed by the aura that suddenly bursted out of his body upon entering that stage, the earth that he sat on in the forest suddenly had numerous cracks appear on it surface, which then rapidly spread out into the distance by many feet.
And, as soon as this aura bursted out of his body, Xiao Lin felt his physical strength increasing; he could feel that his muscles grew heavier and tighter, like they were being tightly packed by a thick band.
Then when he looked into his dantian, he could see that the 266 Ordinary Blood Symbols there had grown larger in size, and that they developed a darker hue to the blood-red color that they initially possessed.
With a glad nod of his head, he quickly stood from the place that he sat on which was now cracked and then hurried off to where each of the bodies of the disciples laid on to take their hearts that were on the ground, or pull it out from within their chests and stow them away into his. And as he did this, he also looked out for their spatial rings which he kept into his.
Once he was done, he quickly employed the first-level technique called the 'Blood Dragon Flash' from the Heavenly Blood Marauder Unparalleled Blur Flash technique, a compilation of powerful, low-level to high-level, profound, superior evasion techniques.
So, once he deployed that evasion skill, the really faint shadow of a dragon that was slightly blood-red in color, immediately appeared around him.
Swoosh!
Then once this hazy and hardly noticeable, blood-colored shadow of a dragon manifested around him, he shot away really fast at several times the speed that he could actually achieve with his Super Speed ability, when combined with the Blood Entity Normal Steps movement technique that he had mastered from the Illusionary Vampire Unstoppable Godly Steps movement art.
A second after he fully left that massive forest to find a place where he could stay to practice the Demonic Mark condensation technique before returning back to his room in that inn, teachers from the sect of that disciple who stealthily crushed that jade-like item began to arrive one after the other.
Then when they saw the gruesome massacre that had occurred here, their brows with furrowed with great shock before extreme anger appeared in their faces, contorting them to make them seem ugly and totally hideous.
Arghhhhh!!!
***
Not long, news that all the disciples who came from different sects for the competition had been wickedly slaughtered, spread to all the areas of the town's center.
This news caused everyone to be extremely shocked and then devastated. They couldn't believe what they heard. Then they felt that it was perhaps someone that had serious grudges with all the sects that did that. However, they still wondered how someone will hold grudges against that many sects, in which many of them even came from really distant towns just for this competition. Then they really hoped that the teachers from those sects will find the killer so that they too would understand what really happened, what led to the massacre.
The teachers at the moment had started combing the forest to search for the killer or killers of their disciples and capture him or her for interrogation before finally destroying them.
Xiao Lin who didn't stop using that low-level, profound evasion technique, just so he could leave a lot of gap between himself and the teachers who he felt would be scanning everywhere by now for the killers of their students, later arrived at a place where he felt should be safe for him at the moment to do what he had in mind.
The place that he stopped at was a really dilapidated house as it entire structure appeared to be totally worn-out, invoking the feeling that it could collapse anytime soon. However, Xiao Lin took the risk of hiding in there to practice the Demonic Mark condensation technique.
Very quickly, he brought out the hearts stored into his spatial ring which then formed a slightly large heap in front of him.
Then he began to take the hearts one after the other to form True Demonic Marks in his body.
Not very long, he had used up half of the pile of hearts before him. And at the moment, he had condensed a hundred and twenty-two True Demonic Marks in his dantian, which when added to the fifty True Demonic Marks previously present in his dantian, would give a hundred and seventy-two True Demonic Marks.
Xiao Lin gave a smile that his rise to terrifying power was near. Although he understood that it was still very far, he could however feel that he was getting closer to it, even if it was inch by inch. Then as soon as he ended this thought, he continued with what he was doing.
Many minutes later, eight minutes to be precise, the numbers of True Demonic Marks in his dantian had increased from 172 to 266. But at this point in time, he had entirely used up all the hearts that he gathered from those 216 disciples that he indifferently slayed back at the enormous Southwind Forest.
Then as soon as he stopped here, a really strong and overwhelming, violently roiling ferocious aura that seemed like it wanted to pierce out of the building that he was in and shoot into the sky to evoke a strange phenomenon, and actually shone with intense redness that dyed everything around him in the house with it dazzling, ominous brilliance, suddenly discharged from his entire body. However, it retracted back into his body in the next instant.
Then with a delighted smile appearing in his face at the slight increase of the overbearing and oppressive, exceptionally fierce power possessed by both his Blood Energy and Hermetic Demonic Energy, he stored the shrunk, dried-up hearts which he extracted blood essences from back into his spatial ring and would eventually dispose off somewhere, as he couldn't store garbage in his dimensional storage ring.
He then stood to his feet to quickly leave the desolated building before it would really collapse upon him, since the Demonic Aura that erupted from his body would further weaken the timeworn and deteriorated house more.
However, after he reverted back to his pale-skinned, human form and then came out of the building, a few teachers from the Golden Bull sect, the Three Fiery Fairies sect, the Ice Phoenix sect, the Earthbreaker sect, and the Heavenly Crimson Thunder sect, appeared before him with eyes that glowed with intense anger.